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Book Review: by Lang Reid

Royal Varuna Yacht Club - a Glorious Half Century

“There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Thus spoke the Water Rat in Kenneth Graham’s “Wind in the Willows”. However, Water Rat spawned many more ‘water rats’ and Peter Cummins has put together a book covering the 50 years of the Royal Varuna Yacht Club, to attempt to cover the history, and the men and women who made it so.
Principally, there are two very significant royals associated with the Royal Varuna, being Thailand’s revered HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great, a gold medal international sailor himself, and HSH Bhisadej Rajani, the Thai Prince who taught His Majesty how to do it. However, they were not the only members of the Royal Family to sail from the Royal Varuna Yacht Club, as HRH Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, HRH Princess Ubolratana, HRH Princess Bajarakitiyabha, HRH Prince Bira and HRH Princess Lom were also keen sailors. The local waters even saw the Duke of Edinburgh race His Majesty to Koh Larn in 1965, but lose. However, he sent a catamaran to HM the King as a present on his return to the UK, the first multihull to arrive in Thailand.
The club began when Walter Meyer put an advertisement in the Bangkok Post in May 1957. “Boating friends wanted to form a boating club” was all it said, with a PO box contact. One of the people who answered was HSH Prince Bhisadej, and at that point, history was about to be made.
Cummins details the early days of the Royal Varuna (or the Varuna Marine Club as it was originally known), as if they were yesterday, and one reads on as if it were a who-dunnit. What will happen next, keeps you turning the pages, until you find you have come to today, and the end of Varuna’s glorious half century, and Cummins was the natural one to record all this.
Peter Cummins has been sailing since he was a teenager in Tasmania, and has kept his passion for the sport all his life. That he has been a past commodore of the Royal Varuna Yacht Club is then no surprise, nor is the fact that a race has been named after him, the PC Classic, also sailed off the Royal Varuna Beach. It needed someone with that passion, and an eloquence, to be able to write such a book as this.
It is a fascinating report of half a century of sailors and their need for a common meeting place. But like all human beings, there are many tacks and diversions for those 50 years of sailors, despite common needs. That divisions could exist as to whether the club should have a swimming pool show the human aspects of life, and Cummins covers this with that light-hearted touch for which he is very well known.
For anyone with even the slightest interest in the sea and sailing, to have this hard cover volume should be mandatory. Without history, there could be no today as we know it, and we should give ‘history’ its appropriate priority. This book, Royal Varuna Yacht Club - a Glorious Half Century, does precisely that.
It is, however, more than just a historical treatise, but a tribute to all the men and women who created that history. As Peter Cummins notes in the book, these men and women have included “His Majesty the King himself and members of the Thai Royal Family, visiting Royalty and dignitaries, princes, princesses, ambassadors, service men and women, doctors, dentists and other professionals, the diplomatic corps and United Nations personnel, captains of industry, professors, school teachers, aid workers, photographers, journalists and media tycoons, and a large cross-section of Thai and farang society in the kingdom.”

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